The board of Fort Worth’s Kimbell Museum defends the $1.5 million salaries it pays to two of its board members for their services to the museum. The museum has been criticized for paying the two for services which are usually voluntary. – Dallas Morning News
Tag: 08.04.00
WHO CONTROLS THE ART
There’s a battle raging for control of Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art. “People on powerful committees are there because they have a contribution to make, and there is usually an ego commensurate with that capacity to contribute. When such people’s views are bypassed, or worse, not sought in the first place, there is usually trouble.” – Sydney Morning Herald
ODE TO THE PIANO
“Electronics and metal alloys, computer chips and state-of-the-art plastics: all have been applied to the piano’s design, but they don’t improve the original appreciably. It is what it is, a perfect articulation of an idea that occupies a kind of cultural cul-de-sac. It’s the ultimate expression of one strand of our mechanically clever culture (think of the typewriter or the computer keyboard) joined to our specific notion of music based on the diatonic scale. Its great genius is to translate the merely mechanical into the realm of music.” – The Guardian
ORCHESTRAL MAGIC
Jonathan Harvey had an orchestral premiere in London this week. “Harvey’s music could well gain a cult following amongst the generation which spaced out to the wilder reaches of Pink Floyd or the more surreal moments of John Williams’s score for Raiders of the Lost Ark. In one of his most spell-binding works, One Evening, an Indian tabla rhythm speeds up and rise in pitch, as if the recording were being accelerated, until it actually transforms into a rising musical note which swoops from one speaker to another.” – The Independent (UK)
LEARNING THROUGH MUSIC
Does having kids play and listen to music actually make them smarter? An oft-quoted study said yes. But there has been resistance to the idea. “Researchers are mustering data to counter those who are intent on debunking the ‘Mozart effect” – the theory that classical music makes the brain work better.” – The Straits Times (Singapore) (NYT)
ORCHESTRA CUTS CONCERTS
Canada’s National Youth Orchestra brings together the country’s top young musicians each summer and plays a tour across the country. But this year the tour has been cut back from 15 concert stops to eight because of funding cuts. – CBC
HARRY HELD HOSTAGE
The Canadian distributor of “Harry Potter” refused last month to ship more copies of the book to the Chapters book superstore chain until Chapters paid some of its large outstanding debt, says the distributor. – National Post (Canada)
WEB PAY
National Writers Union makes deal with Stephen Brill’s Contentville to pay freelance writers a fee every time their work is downloaded from the site. – Variety